Mike Maccagnan admits Jets tried to trade into second round

Broadway Joe

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Mar 19, 2019
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Pre-draft rumors had the Jets trading down in the first round. Then, a day later, word was they wanted back into the second round for Georgia receiver Mecole Hardman.

General Manager Mike Maccagnan confirmed the Jets had interest in moving into the second round but wouldn’t say for who. The team had no second-round selections after trading up for Sam Darnold in 2018.

The Chiefs selected Hardman with the 56th overall choice.

“I think sometimes if you have a pick within the round, it’s a lot easier to move up in the round,” Maccagnan said on NFL Media insider Ian Rapoport’s podcast. “But if you’re trying to get back into the second round and you don’t have a second-round pick per se in that year’s draft, it makes it a little more difficult. There’s a lot of situations where we had talked to teams and quite a few scenarios where teams opted to not want to make a trade and felt good about the players on the board and took the player respectively. But that’s part of the draft process you go through.

“In the end we never found a team that was going to be in a position to facilitate a trade with us. We sort of stayed put, kept our picks, kept our future picks and we felt we got some good players in the third round.”

The Jets ended up staying put in the first round, selecting Alabama defensive tackle Quinnen Williams despite calls from other teams. The Bills reportedly were among the teams with interest in moving up.

“It was never a situation where we were trying to get out of the third pick,” Maccagnan told Rapoport. “We actually felt very comfortable being there. We said very publicly we were going to get a very good player at three. But we went through our process in talking to teams.

“I think when we were sitting there with our situation, I think we looked at the possibility of trading back or trading out of the spot. But when we were on the clock and talking to teams, there was never really a trade offer that we felt was strong enough to make us move basically when it was all said and done. That being said, we were very happy to take what we felt was one of the top players in the draft at that spot and went forward with it.”
 
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